EPTUS Politics Mega-thread - Page 9749
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Read the rules in the OP before posting, please. In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. | ||
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brian
United States9643 Posts
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FueledUpAndReadyToGo
Netherlands30548 Posts
Just days after the House passed its version of the federal tax law slashing corporate tax rates, House Speaker Paul Ryan collected nearly $500,000 in campaign contributions from billionaire energy mogul Charles Koch and his wife, according to a recent campaign donor report. sourceKoch and his brother David spent millions of dollars to get the tax law passed and are spending millions more in a public relations campaign in an attempt to boost support for the law, The Wall Street Journal reported. Koch Industries, one of the largest private corporations in the nation, operates refineries and manufactures a variety of products. The new tax law — which slices corporate tax rates from 35 percent to 21 percent, slashes estate taxes and includes a special deduction for oil and gas investors — is expected to save the Koch brothers and their businesses billions of dollars in taxes. Just 13 days after the tax law was passed, Charles Koch and his wife, Elizabeth, donated nearly $500,000 to Ryan’s joint fundraising committee, according to a campaign finance report filed Thursday. Five other donors, including billionaire businessmen Jeffery Hildebrand and William Parfet, each contributed $100,000 in the last quarter of 2017, according to the records. “It looks like House Speaker Ryan is quickly being rewarded for passing this legislation that overwhelmingly benefits the Kochs and billionaires like them,” Adam Smith, spokesman for campaign finance reform nonprofit Every Voice, told the International Business Times, which first reported the Koch contributions. The Koch donations were paid into Team Ryan, which raises money for the speaker, the National Republican Congressional Committee and a PAC run by Ryan. On the same day, Charles and Elizabeth Koch also each donated $237,000 to the NRCC. | ||
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zlefin
United States7689 Posts
On January 21 2018 22:53 iamthedave wrote: By all means correct me on the following things as I understand them (and attempt to grapple with this latest situation) * 2013 shutdown: This came about - if I remember right - because a certain wing of the Republican GOP insisted point blank that they would not sign any bill that didn't completely defund the ACA. I vividly recall Bill O'Reilly of all people telling a Tea Party speaker that they couldn't possibly win in that situation because the ACA had been signed into law and therefore had to be funded. it was also unwinnable because Obama was president, and ACA was his signature legislation, so he'd veto anything destroying it. * 2018 shutdown: The Dems and GOP came up with a bipartisan bill that would have sorted everything out, but for some reason it failed. I'm not sure why. Did the GOP feel they were giving up too much? I'm not clear on this; my understanding is that Trump blew up the deal. I don't get why congress didn't just pass it anyway and invite the president to veto it so any blame falls on him. the republican leadership in congress seems reluctant to antagonize trump. * The GOP then put forward a bill that required the Dems to accept multiple cuts to the ACA in order to keep things open. They refused, as the ACA is a hard line they don't want to budge on. * The Dems tried to put forth an alternative, but Mitch refused to allow a vote on it. Was there something the GOP objected to in the alternative? I've not heard a take on it. The GOP may've simply disliked it strategically, as it removes their ability to leverage the situation. The GOP has been trying to leverage stuff in bad faith to force through what they want. In general they've blocked a lot of Dem bills from getting to the floor so they don't have to be on record as voting against them. * Somewhere in this mess, Trump tweeted that he didn't support the inclusion of CHIP funding, which seems to be the one thing everyone supports? Or is that a Dem thing? Looking at the posts here, everyone seems to think CHIP funding is good. Dems strongly support CHIP; Republicans officially support CHIP (doing otherwise would get them voted out), but it's clear they don't actually support it much, if at all. If they actually supported CHIP they could've fully funded it ages ago. Instead they kept it unfunded to use as bargaining leverage. The republicans claim they didn't fund it because they were arguing over where to get the money for it. Which was shown to be false when they passed the tax cut which increases the debt by far more, and is on a far less worthy cause. * The Republicans still can't get everyone voting together because a few voted no. And a few Democrats voted yes, and they failed by a slim margin. If the Republicans all voted in lockstep would they have passed it, plus the Dem yes votes? Why did the nos no? If the republicans all voted together plus the dem yes, it wouldn't be quite enough to get past the 60 required to end a filibuster (which someone would have done) so it would not have passed. The republican nos were because they're tired of endless continuing resolutions. The actual budget was due Oct 1, and kicking the can down the road a month at a time to try to reach a deal isn't working, they think it's time to pass a proper budget. It's a nuisance for agencies planning, since they still don't know what their budget will be. * Is DACA the big sticking point here? Or CHIP? Or the border wall? Or something entirely different? I'm genuinely trying to figure this out but the messaging is really garbled and at the moment seems to involve a lot of 'YOU DID IT' from both sides without any clear explanation of WHY whoever did what they did, did it. Some of it is an outgrowth of Republicans campaigning for years on dismantling the affordable care act. They painted themselves into a corner and are trying to hold onto their jobs. They tried to vote on directly dismantling it, and they couldn't get the votes to do so (and it was done in ways which bypass the filibuster, so if all republicans had voted the same they could've done it). The republicans do not have an actual replacement plan for the ACA, and some of them (ones in moderate/left-leanin areas) know that if they just remove it, they will lose their next election as people who lose their health insurance will be very angry. The republicans spent years saying the ACA was horrible and damaging, which they knew to be false. So when they attack ACA, they lose all the Dem votes and (sometimes at least) a few moderate republicans, if they don't attack ACA, then they broke their campaign promise and will get primary'd out. The larger issues are simply that the republicans do not agree amongst themselves on a budget, and they're not that willing to make a bipartisan deal because they fear getting primary'd out (many districts are so Red that the only threat of them losing their seat comes from the primary rather than the general election). Years of republicans acting in bad faith and destroying the norms of governance has also made the dems ever warier, and lead to a general decrease in willingness to make deals, but that's probably a much milder effect as politicians would still make a deal when it's in their self-interest to do so. * Part of the issue seems to be that the issues at foot have been getting Continuing Resolutioned for months, and some senators have had enough and want them sorted instead of having to talk about them again in another few months. Is this part of the problem? Yes it is. | ||
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iamthedave
England2814 Posts
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Yoav
United States1874 Posts
On January 21 2018 11:45 ticklishmusic wrote: Chelsea Manning is totally a legit candidate, right? Chelsea Manning is a traitor and acted as an agent of the Russian government. I, for one, am going to be consistent in calling out both liberals and conservatives who worked to further Russian interests. "I was going through a lot" is an excuse that might get me to forgive you personally, but this is not the time to be showing lenience toward spies and traitors. We have enough "stupid, unpatriotic, treasonous" stuff coming out of the Trump White House already. | ||
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Sermokala
United States14201 Posts
People don't think shes a real candidate because she's trump level elect-ability but is transgender as well. | ||
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ChristianS
United States3304 Posts
On January 21 2018 17:10 mozoku wrote: This is a much more reasonable analysis than what I've seen from other posters, and I can mostly agree with it. That said, I don't see it as in conflict with what I've posted. I don't see how the the breakdown of long-term negotiations, from a funding perspective, can be blamed on Republicans. Doing so requires the assumption that DACA is somehow necessarily linked to funding. The short-term analysis is doesn't contradict what I've read, but it doesn't absolve the Democrats either. While the Democrats would have preferred a one week CR, I've seen no reason to consider a one-month CR a "poison pill." Nor do I see any issue with the majority party holding a vote on their preferred timeline instead of their opposition's. It isn't really a defensible response to shut down the government because you didn't get the timeline you wanted on the timeline. The Dem strategy for the shutdown is this: Republicans usually are worse in generic shutdown politics because they're the small government party; they also control all three relevant chambers; their president is unpopular and widely seen as incompetent; and DACA is popular. Hence, they feel they can force a shutdown and essentially blame the Republicans to gain leverage on DACA. The optics from their perspective are fantastic. The issue is that, in an ironic reversal of roles, the facts and truth of the matter actually lie with the Republicans on this one. This is why both parties are somewhat comfortable going into the shutdown: the Dems think they can persuade the public it's the GOP's fault with of all the circumstantial evidence, and the GOP feels it can successfully explain to the public that the Dems are the ones that actually chose the shutdown. I guess I just don't understand why you would dismiss the idea that the Dems might have a good reason to want the timeline to be shorter. In this case my understanding is that we've been on these short-term CRs since September, and each time Republicans say "yeah we'll work on a budget with you Dems this month" and then fuck off to another room and work on healthcare or taxes or something with zero effort at bipartisan support. In that context I can totally understand saying "no, we have to actually work on a budget this time." And the way to ensure they'll actually work on a budget is to make the timeline short enough that they don't have a choice. If they spend a week working on a deal and still need more time, pass another 1 week CR. That interpretation is giving them the benefit of the doubt in a way that I could understand not wanting to do. Maybe they're as cynical as you say; they know shutdowns are part of the GOP brand and they can expect the public to blame Republicans. But I do think there are reasonable arguments for the position they've taken, not only on the long-term budget but also on the CR, that don't necessarily reduce to "we think it's worth it to shut down the government to get what we want." Maybe the biggest reason I'm tempted to lay the blame on the GOP is their complete failure at bipartisanship for the past year. Under Obama we could have the argument about whether Dems weren't doing a good enough job of reaching out to Republicans or whether Republicans were being intransigent (I'm not just talking about the shutdown here). That debate largely hasn't happened under Trump because Dems haven't even really been given the chance to be intransigent. Every legislative effort has been aimed at 52 Republican senators coming up with at least 50 votes between them, and success or failure came from whether they got those votes. Democrats weren't in the room for negotiations, they didn't even let them see the bills until as late as possible, and no concessions were made to try to get their support. That meeting with the Dems on a budget deal was supposed to be their effort to turn that around, but they botched it. They agreed to a bunch of stuff, then turned around and said "wait a minute, no no no no no" and fireballed the deal they negotiated. The reason, of course, is because they put people in the room that wanted a deal the larger GOP didn't want, but that isn't an excuse, just an explanation. They should have either put different people in the room or told those people more clearly what the GOP was willing to back. It's really damaging to effective good-faith negotiations if you can't trust the other side to actually deliver something when they promise it. If the trust is there, they can say "I could give you this" and you can say "I would give you this in return." Otherwise when they say "I could give you this, what would you give me in return" you have to say "well before I show you my hand, how do I know you can really offer that, or that you won't change your mind last minute? What protections and contingencies go into effect if you change your mind or fail to deliver?" It makes the discussion much more strained and time-consuming. So if we view budget shutdowns not as "one party wanting to shut the government down" but as "negotiations breaking down as the parties try to reach a deal to keep the government open," and then ask why negotiations broke down, I think a lot of that can be traced to mistakes the Republicans have been making for at least the past year. Of course, if you think the Democrats actually did want a shutdown, frayed negotiations had nothing to do with it, but on that, I think I'm just taking them at their word in a way you aren't willing to do (that they really do think it's important for the shutdown to be on a shorter timeline, and that's not just an excuse to shut the government down for political points). | ||
KwarK
United States44275 Posts
Free society depends upon transparent institutions. And when those institutions fail to be transparent it depends upon whistleblowers who sacrifice themselves for the rest of us. | ||
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Sermokala
United States14201 Posts
On January 22 2018 03:00 KwarK wrote: Chelsea Manning did whistleblow on some legitimately awful things the US military was doing in Iraq. I vividly remember how I felt the first time I watched the Collateral Murder video for example. Free society depends upon transparent institutions. And when those institutions fail to be transparent it depends upon whistleblowers who sacrifice themselves for the rest of us. Societies also depend on being secure and not living in fear. They also depend more or less on doing terrible things to other societies in order to benifit their society. Chelsea manning made us less safe despite making it more transparent. | ||
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KwarK
United States44275 Posts
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Sermokala
United States14201 Posts
On January 22 2018 03:07 KwarK wrote: That view is both false and craven. Your view is naive and fatalist. | ||
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Ciaus_Dronu
South Africa1848 Posts
On January 22 2018 03:06 Sermokala wrote: Societies also depend on being secure and not living in fear. They also depend more or less on doing terrible things to other societies in order to benifit their society. Chelsea manning made us less safe despite making it more transparent. That's some A-Grade imperialist crap right there. But hey you need terrorists to scare people into allowing authoritarian levels of "safety" measures to be implemented. Hard to make those without ruining enough foreign nations. Even ignoring the principle of what you are saying, needless collateral and killing cameramen does ****-all to make you safer, or advance any society. | ||
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Sermokala
United States14201 Posts
Or on the other hand just never leave the US. I'm sure the world will do great judging from the last times we did that. "transparency" is a crutch people do to forgive themselves for the sins that their parents committed to give them the lives they have today. | ||
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Gorsameth
Netherlands22552 Posts
On January 22 2018 03:06 Sermokala wrote: Societies also depend on being secure and not living in fear. They also depend more or less on doing terrible things to other societies in order to benifit their society. Chelsea manning made us less safe despite making it more transparent. "Do terrible things to other societies in order to benefit our own" The justification for every atrocity in human history. | ||
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micronesia
United States24799 Posts
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zlefin
United States7689 Posts
On January 22 2018 03:06 Sermokala wrote: Societies also depend on being secure and not living in fear. They also depend more or less on doing terrible things to other societies in order to benifit their society. Chelsea manning made us less safe despite making it more transparent. I disagree on the second sentence, and question the foundation for that claim (and also the breadth of which you're applying that, as you could be covering quite a lot of different things with that) no comment on the manning issue. | ||
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IgnE
United States7681 Posts
How's it fatalist? | ||
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Doodsmack
United States7224 Posts
Because the Iraq War made our country more safe, obviously. | ||
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Mohdoo
United States15743 Posts
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zlefin
United States7689 Posts
On January 22 2018 04:11 Mohdoo wrote: How long do you guys think the government will be shut down? impossible to say with any accuracy; as a vague guess projecting from the history of past shutdowns, 3 weeks. | ||
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